While riding the treadmill at the gym the other night a new story flashed across the screen. Forty-two percent of moms suffer stress from using the Pinterest website. Here’s the conclusion from the publishers of the survey… “In our exclusive TODAY Moms survey of 7,000 U.S. mothers, 42 percent said that they sometimes suffer from Pinterest stress – the worry that they’re not crafty or creative enough.”
Lisa Mohrman/PinterestFail.com
I admit I haven’t been to Pinterest or even had an interest to Pin, but here’s the deal… I can relate to the stress of having to many ideas for my own good. Whether they come from books, ads, blogs or sites, our culture has no shortage of words about ideas.
Then I recalled a time while planting a church Southern California that a certain segment of our body (and the whole region for that matter) had been influenced by a very well know TV evangelist. His rallies were always packed. People frequently reported wonderful stories. The TV episodes showed fantastic displays of healing and transformation. Who wouldn’t want to tap into that?
Our new church was experiencing some great times of renewal and responses to the Gospel, but they didn’t quite compare to the TV evangelist. Some of the people wanted us to try the ideas promoted by the preacher, which resulted in anxiety about being “good enough”. During my summer break I made it a point to read the latest book written by the man with the great ideas and here’s what I found:
His break through ideas were similar to the basic discipleship that I received as a high school student AND His spectacular experiences were not unlike ordinary times of prayer that many in our church already knew about. Simply put… we were good enough. Said another way… we were Geniuses for simply obeying what God had called already us to do.
Our hair wasn’t on fire. We didn’t have a big sound system. We didn’t have mass media appeal. We did attempt to live for God. It was good enough. Genius.
How does simple obedience help churches stay focused on their mission?